February 2009

February 27, 2009

As I mentioned previously I jumped into screenwriting full steam ahead. But that was mid-2001 when I met my friend and producer John Nemec (more on John in forthcoming articles). As we all know what happened later in the year, the world changed with the terrorist attacks of the World Trade Centers. That was the day the world lost its innocence and for better or worse my job as a columnist at that point was to speak my truth, not the false truths being splashed across the television screen for the following weeks, but my own personal and painful truth. The article that follows is exactly as it ran in the issue of MX East that ran soon after the WTC attacks happened. Where I live is a little over a mile from the banks of the Hudson River and from the Yonkers Pier I could see the buildings burning, all the while knowing people, thousands of people were inside them.I have often been accused of writing straight from the heart and this piece was no exception; I can re-read it now and the tears and emotions well up as if 9-11 was yesterday. All writers have their own style and the trick –and my advice- is to stay your course, don’t imitate someone else’s style; speak and write your truth… the world will eventually come around to it.

Write on,

Michael

"Uncomfortably Numb"

By the time you will read this I am sure you will be aware of the tragedy that has struck America for the second time in it short history. A gutsy but ill-advised enemy has snuck inside the gate and did irreparable harm to our land, our people, and our psyche. Fifty six years ago, Japancame waltzing into Pearl Harbor and sucked us into World War Two.Now an insane Islamic coward has tried to initiate the start of World War Three.

It is now 4 A.M. New York time on September 12th, and I have just gotten off the couch in the basement to come up to bed. Needless to say I didn’t get to sleep after a day of watching my fellow New Yorkers live through the hellish nightmare of a terrorist attack.

At 8:50 A.M. yesterday morning, I got a call from my girlfriend, Susan, who works at Rockefeller Center, which is not far away from the World Trade Center. Susan was in a panic as she looked out her window many floors above the Manhattan streets and told me an airplane just crashed into the Twin Towers. I ran to the third floor of the building where I report to work at the telephone company and turned on the TV in the lounge. What I saw boggled my mind and little did I know this was only the beginning of a grim fairy tale. I told a few of the workers who were not busy what had happened and immediately the urgency of the situation unfolded as people who overheard ran from their desks and broke down crying when they saw the images on the screen. They had husbands and sisters that worked high above the streets in one of those buildings.

My heart sank when I saw the look of desperation on their faces. As more people filed into the lounge, we all were still thinking that some pilot lost his way or had a heart attack and couldn’t steer the plane. The initial reports were that of a Cessna or other small plane and we wanted to believe that. But the amount of smoke and fire billowing from the building didn’t correlate to a small plane. It is amazing what the human mind can force itself to believe when faced with the unbelievable. As the Channel 7 (ABC) news copter hovered and sent us the drama, we could see a large plane bank left and veer around tower number one which was in the foreground of the shot and go behind it. Four seconds later and orange explosion erupted in tower two, which sat in the background. It looked like a bomb had been set off and we realized that this was a terrorist attack. Little did we know at the time that this was the jumbo jet we had seen fly past that was crashing through the middle floors of the 110-story structure.

We were floored as we stood there watching and the two women who had relatives that worked in the Trade Center went into panic mode. Their piercing screams ripped at the heart of even the toughest men standing there. We all felt their pain as they tried to make frantic calls to their loved ones but most of us were too mesmerized by the images on the screen to even move from where we stood. Verizon had many major trunk lines that passed through the W.T.C. and the telephone switches were on overload as word filtered out and calls from loved ones tried to funnel through the log-jammed switches as a result of the calls being re-routed around W.T.C.Susan, in the meantime, was giving me a blow by blow of the first couple of minutes of the invasion. Within seconds, I could hear people in Susan's background yelling and screaming and Susan running with the pack. Her heavy breathing made me realize that she was too close to ground zero for my comfort. I was scared senseless and fought to not let her hear it in my voice.

She said they were evacuating Rockefeller Center and that she would call me when she next could. For the next hour, I proceeded to bite off the ends of my fingernails and call as many people as I could to see if they were okay. I didn’t know it at the time, but my best friend, Terry was a mere two blocks away when the first plane hit. He would later recount to me that the blast of the first plane hitting the building knocked him and others on the entire block off their feet. He would tell of the panic that struck people and the horror of looking behind them and seeing their once-invincible symbol of American might, American manhood burning like some prop on a blockbuster disaster movie.

All of the images for the next several hours were surreal… like we were all in a collective nightmare that none of us could wake up from. In the movie 'Independence Day' there is a scene where the aliens blasted Manhattan to bits that was all too realistic and my mind kept trying to wake up from this real-life movie shoot. I didn’t want to see any more of it. Someone, please…turn the TV off, turn the lights on, wake me up from this unwanted nightmare. But there was no letup. My cell phone rang again and it was Susan. She was now outside and telling me that people were panicking and running all over the place, trampling anyone and anything in their path. She spoke of a woman who was running with her baby in her arms and of how this baby was knocked to the ground and repeatedly stepped on by the panicking crowd running for their own lives. I was in tears now and knew that anything at all was possible in this lifetime.

Susan, along with thousands of other workers, was trying to flee the heart of the attack. Pandemonium was the order of the day even though the rescue workers were on hand in a matter of minutes. When the word filtered down that the orange explosion, we saw was the 767 jumbo jet I too fell into panic and begged Susan to run like hell and get to a safe place. The cell lines as well as the land lines were now dangerously slow, locked up, or non-existent. My heart sank further when we were cut off. I turned to the television set again to see what was happening, hoping for information that could prove useful to Susan when she called again. By now almost every employee had left their desks and gathered in the cafeteria to look in horror at the destruction that was unfolding. I can’t express the multitude of feelings that flowed from all of us. There was fear, shock, anger and outrage at the inhuman horrors we were watching, relief that it wasn’t happening to us, and guilt that we were happy it wasn’t happening to us.

For another hour, I was heartsick not knowing what happened to Susan as there was a near communications blackout. I prayed and left the outcome to God. For moments I had lost faith in Him. How could God let this kind of thing happen? How can anything borne of human flesh have so callous a heart as to orchestrate something this horrendous? The scenes were like a hatchet through the skull; the pain and the reality of it all was mind numbing and emotions left my body and came back in waves… waves too big for me to swim above. I hated humanity for our ability to create weapons and think of treachery capable of planning such an evil, heinous, unprovoked attack.

By this time, I had gotten a cell call from my ex-wife, Dawn, who was in tears asking me to pick our son Brian up from school. She would get our daughter Jessica and take them to her job at the sugar factory. There was no work for her to do as her industry lives and dies by the commodities trading which was shut down at this point due to the lack of communications. Brian seemed in a daze when we met at the main office of his high school. Fourteen-year-old children were not meant to see the kind of destruction we were enduring. They aren’t supposed to feel the fear that I saw in his eyes as he wondered out loud of the possibilities of more attacks where we were.

Manhattan is less than six miles away from the city of Yonkers as the crow flies. I did my best to explain to him what was happening and who is likely behind it: a multi-millionaire madman who has convinced the peasants of the world that America is bad because we all are richer than them and are intent on keeping them and their faith down. All the while "Osama Big Loudmouth” is hiding the fact that his own personal fortune could easily help pull his own countrymen out of their impoverished life if that was his intent in the first place.

By 5 P.M., it was time to leave work – I got absolutely nothing done today-- and the whole city of Yonkers seemed like a ghost town. Not that there weren’t any people around, there were plenty, but there was a silence that is indescribable. No one spoke at all... no one looked up to your face, and no one smiled. The sky was eerily tranquil. It was such a beautiful day to live, not a beautiful day to die. The waves of pain inside was crushing as the magnitude of what had taken place weighed heavily on our shoulders. The skies were deafeningly quiet as the whole country shut down all air traffic save for the occasional F-16 fighter jets that strafed the Hudson River. Not even the birds were flying much. The fighter jets were so fast that if you were lucky enough to see one, it would streak by silently and five seconds later, you would hear the thunderous roar of the engines on full afterburner. I felt hope seeing the jet jockeys up there knowing they would not be taking prisoners should anything else come up.

I was uncomfortably numb by the time I drove through the pockets of people huddled on various street corners.Even the bad guys/drug dealers in the seedy neighborhoods were stunned and looking scared as they huddled in front of the stoops where they lived. They looked so scared, so innocent, so vulnerable, and so… human. I stopped to talk to every telephone service technician I drove past for there was nothing to do but talk about it and vent a little as this was too much for any person to digest on their own. It just defied logic that what we saw really happened. We saw structures that were hundreds of feet wide and nearly a quarter of a mile high fall to the ground like a crumbling deck of cards... all the while knowing that there were still thousands, possibly tens of thousands of people still inside. The only saving grace is that their deaths were swift; they didn't suffer long and drawn out deaths.

As I stood there talking to Marcus, a co-worker, an Arabic woman and her two children walked past us and I must tell you that the rage that built up inside me was quite ugly. I had to fight the urge to do harm to her and her kids. I had to remember that they too are Americans and have nothing to do with the antics of a madman, an Anti-Christ with a heart as cold as Jesus’ was full of love. I had to pull my faith back and remember that I am not alone, I am not dead, and as a journalist, have an obligation to help rebuild this mighty nation’s pride. I have an obligation as an American to hold my head high and not let the savage jaws of terrorism steal my sunshine, steal my joy at living and steal the dignity away from those who perished yesterday for simply doing what all good Americans do: go to work. If these religious zealots could see the work, time and effort that it takes to make America the great country she is, they would have less time for jealousy and put more effort into building up their own countries. I am not rich like Osama "Big Loudmouth," and likely you aren’t either, but we are vilified by people an ocean away for the fact that we live in the richest country in the world. For a moment I wish these zealots would see that America's wealth is not it's true strength, it is the strength of her people that makes her wealthy.

I wish to ask that anyone reading this say a prayer for the victims, their family and friends, and for all people of this great land. I pray that we recover and rebuild, rebuild the two monuments that were destroyed to honor those who lost their lives. We must never forget them and the world community must now act in a swift and decisive way to ensure that the germ, the stench that is terrorism be eradicated from this planet for good. The world is changed forever and history will record this day, September 11th, 2001, as the day the entire world lost its innocence. By the way, Susan and Terry both made it home safely.

February 17, 2009

by Jon F. Merz, novelist (author of the Lawson Vampire novels), screenwriter, and now TV producer for the new TV showThe Fixer

Bob, Rose’s Chief Executive, had initially told us that we’d have an answer by the end of the week. Rose was going to take my novels and head home, give them a read, and then let us know if she wanted to get involved. We said great. We could wait a few days no problem.

Friday came and went without a call.

Any sales professional will tell you that the longer it takes to get an answer out of a prospect, the more likely it is that it will be a no. The sale goes cold. So, when the weekend passed, Jaime and I made sure to call on Monday. Rose, however, wasn’t around since she’d flown down to her six million dollar home in Florida. Her assistant would give her the message that we’d called.

We kept waiting.

Days turned into weeks. And our initial optimism about the meeting quickly started to dwindle. Rose was nowhere to be found. She was busy. Messages were passed on to her (presumably) and we kept up the calls.

In the meantime, we’d started a group for the project out on Facebook. We had a few hundred members and I took pains to search for Rose’s sons on Facebook and friend them. They accepted my request and I then promptly invited them to join THE FIXER group. They both did. This helped restore some measure of hope in me, but the continued failure of Rose to contact us nibbled away at any of the confidence I felt.

Jaime and I replayed the meeting over and over again, trying to dissect and see where we might have made mistakes. We Monday-morning quarterbacked that thing so often and we both came away with one conclusion: we could not have prepared any more or done things any better than we did. If we lost this prospect, it simply wasn’t meant to be.

That slammed home a hard truth: while it’s absolutely vital to be as totally prepared as possible for any meeting like this, preparation does not win the game. It only makes defeat a little less likely. There are still plenty of variables that can derail what looks to be a promising partnership. And most of those variables are things you can’t prepare for. That makes it all the tougher to take when things go badly.

Finally, after the better part of a month, my cell phone rang. The number that popped up on to the screen matched the number on Bob’s card. (I’d positioned Bob’s card right atop my keyboard from the day I’d returned from the meeting knowing that he would eventually call us.)

His assistant said hello when I answered and asked me to hold while she patched Bob through. I took a few deep breaths and steeled myself for the conversation, my heart thundering in my chest. Memories of the dangerous situations I’d been lucky enough to survive during my life flashed through my head as adrenaline raced through my system. It seemed to me that I had stepped out on to another kind of battlefield, one where hope is the casualty of war.

Bob came on the line. We exchanged the obligatory pleasantries. I noticed he made no apology for the enormous length of time it had taken them to reach whatever conclusion he was about to deliver.

“So, you know, we don’t know very much about the entertainment industry.”

I frowned. We’d covered this already in the meeting. “It’s new ground for you,” I said. “I understand.”

“Yes, so I know Rose was really interested in pursuing this, but her advisors think it’s a bit too risky at the moment. I really don’t think this is going to be the right move for us right now. Especially since we’d be the lead investors on the project.”

This was true. We didn’t have any other investors at that time. If Rose decided to come onboard, she would be our first and most prominent investor.

Bob continued. “So, what I’d suggest is you guys keep doing what you’re doing. We had a great meeting – very impressed with the both of you – and if you can find some other investors, we want you to come back and talk to us.”

My heart sank. This wasn’t what I’d hoped to hear. “So, you’re saying Rose wants to boogie. She just doesn’t want to be the first person out on the dance floor.”

Bob laughed. “That’s about it, exactly.”

I thanked him for his time and said we’d be in touch. I hung up. Devastated. We’d had a great meeting. Rose clearly wanted to get involved, but her money people had convinced her it was too risky.

I called Jaime and told him the news. We were both floored. Pissed off. Why, we wanted to know, would anyone worth about a billion dollars take financial advice from people who weren’t even millionaires? Rose had seemed like a strong woman who was capable of making her own decisions. But apparently not.

We allowed ourselves an hour to mourn the fact that we hadn’t succeeded.

Yet.

Then it was back to searching.

As one last gasp at trying anything, I reached out to both of Rose’s sons and asked if they would be interested in coming on-board for a smaller investment. Jaime and I figured that a couple of young playboy types might really enjoy doing something like this. But neither son showed any interest, citing the exact same reasons that Bob had told me on the phone. Too risky.

Until we had another investor, Rose was a dead-end.

We took the hit in stride. Both Jaime and I have dealt with a lot of tough things in our lives. We still had a killer project that we knew was going to be an immense success. All we had to do was find someone with the courage and foresight to recognize its greatness.

February 04, 2009

I started off wanting to write children's books. Lots of classes and subsequent stacks of rejection letters later I realized I wasn't going to make it.

An article in a Writer's Digest issue suggested "write what you know." On a whim while I tried to figure out what I wanted to write about I sent in several slogans to a company in Oregon named Ephemera, they sell bumper stickers and such. Three made the finals and one was picked and made into a product_"I Don't Do Mornings"_ which I have since seen all over the place. The high I got from getting paid to write was indescribable and it pushed me further along in the game.

After long pondering the situation, I remembered the crazy, funny stories of my days as an amateur motocross racer and put pen to paper. Around that time a buddy and fellow racer had just started a district level paper about the local racing scene and I submitted an article to him; it was printed and the guy asked for more. After three articles I realized it must be good work and requested to get paid for them. I learned the next lesson in the writing game when It took another two months before I finally cornered him and got my 75 dollar check for the three pieces. Long story short, I got an article in a program for a monster truck event he was promoting and that led to another article in the program for the prestigious USGP motocross race in Budds Creek,Maryland and meeting Davey Coombs.

By coincidence of the two articles I had in my hands, I handed Davey the one that mentioned Evel Knievel --I had no idea Evel is Davey's hero. He printed the article in his underground newspaper Racer X Illustrated and every query for freelance work I sent after that I got based solely on having been in RXI. The paper went on to become the most read glossy magazine in motocross history.

I then secured my own column,"Northern Exposure," in MX Southern Style which became MX East and then MX America. I quickly gained a fan base and my confidence grew in leaps and bounds. I secured columns in MRA, a Pennsylvania based motocross paper and in Raceway news, the official paper of Raceway Park in Englishtown, New Jersey.

Even local Pro racers were sending me mail saying how much they enjoyed my articles. I was the voice for a generation of dirt bikers who made them feel good about what they did and each other. While the general public looked at us like adrenaline junkies or daredevil freaks on a death wish....we were nether. We were athletes who lived for our sport, our families, and our friends.

At one point I even had a reader send a letter to the MX America saying that when they read my articles it wasn't like I was writing for thousands of people but to them directly. That meant a lot to me and I realized I wanted to reach more people... I decided screenwriting was the ticket. I even went as far as missing a car payment on my Mustang GT at the time to take the McKee screen writing class.

From the beginning it has taken seven years (I started in earnest in 2001) to go from journalist to screenwriter (they are polar opposites) and eight drafts to get Hollywood's attention. Now draft nine is in place with high hopes of a nice check and career change to follow. Stay tuned... the best is yet to come.